The Search

I started my research for the novel No Point in Dying Now in 2000, but in my three years of research of James Durrett, his family, unit, and the Civil War, I was never able to find where he was buried. You’d think with the internet and all the avenues of information available to the public it would have been a simple thing to do; however, his grave site eluded and haunted me for the past ten years, until May of 2010. Through a fluke and happenstance Google search, I found James’s final resting place at the Magnolia Cemetery in Mobile, Alabama. I discovered that his last name was misspelled. Needless to say, an overwhelming sense of relief and peace enveloped my whole being. The final connection to a young man I admired and felt a close kinship to was finally completed.